Ski-Wear Turns Fashiony at Aspen Fashion Week

Models walk the runway at various Aspen Fashion Week shows. Photographs by Matt Power and Miles Ladin.

Back in the early days of skiing, men took to the slopes in ties and knickerbockers. Women flounced around in skirts. And while technical advances in past decades have generally led skiers from the sort of looks that let you blend in at, say, a chic hotel bar, a lot of today’s ski-wear designers are going back to closing the gap between slopes and street.

“I think all of the ski and outerwear brands are definitely making a push to try to be more fashion,” Aspen Fashion Week founder Lisa Johnson said last Thursday between one of the dozen or so open-air runway shows she’d help put together, for the second year running, at the base of Aspen Mountain. The sun was out, the Veuve Clicquot was flowing, and Vancouver silver medalist Julia Mancuso was about to stride down the catwalk and cheekily throw open her parka to reveal a set of very accomplished legs. It wasn’t quite Milan or Paris—in a good way.

Mancuso will be consulting on ski-wear design with Spyder, the performance-oriented brand that has outfitted the U.S. Ski Team since 1989. “I’m looking to add something a little sassy and fun,” she explained after her turn on the runway. Mancuso—who launched her lingerie line, Kiss My Tiara, at the 2010 Winter Olympics—added that she’ll have “outgoing” skiers in mind. “Out in the snow, it’s a white backdrop, and you need to be extra special to stick out,” she said.If Aspen’s runways are any gauge, we can expect even more brightly colored skiers against that white backdrop next season. Aspen favorites Kjus and Obermeyer are sticking with sporty color-blocking, while Rossignol has added some Pop-art panache with a line by ultra-hip French designer JC de Castelbajac. Elsewhere, Day-Glo palettes and retro patterns evoked the 80s mania that gripped the fashion world a few years ago. “The ski world tends to follow a bit later behind the fashion world, so we’re just sort of seeing that being incorporated,” Johnson noted.

Now, though, traditionally function-focused brands are leaning fashion forward. Marmot, the outerwear company that pioneered Gore-Tex in the 70s, has been making “two main plays” in the past year or so, according to Marmot’s P.R. director, Jordan Campbell: one in functional resortwear, the other in the burgeoning “side-country” category. Campbell, a seasoned backcountry skier and mountaineer, explained the latter segment this way: “I’m an advanced skier—I might even put a pack on with a shovel—but that jacket is still going to be cool at the apr&egraves-ski parties. I won’t look like one of those salty dogs who live in mountain towns.”

Los Angeles–based Aether belongs to a similar, albeit lower-altitude category, with sleek, masculine men’s jackets that are a better fit for the streets of New York than the North Face’s ubiquitous puffers are. “We felt there was no brand that was technical but sophisticated,” co-founder Jonah Smith said, adding that Burton and Quiksilver skewed too young for him, Zegna Sport too old, and Prada and Marc Jacobs “felt like lodge-wear I would buy for my wife.” Aether has made a name for itself with its dark monochromes and the “Space Hoodie,” a form-fitting top made from supersoft Japanese nylon.

Aether’s high-tech minimalism is a rebuttal to many of the European traditions Authier embraced for its Aspen Fashion Week relaunch. A collaboration between Vicenza-based designer Gustavo Sangiorgi and Aspen retailer Lee Keating, the company’s new, 10-piece collection blends major ski-wear trends of the moment—plaid, camouflage, fur linings—with upscale mid-century accents like horn buttons. “I love 50s design for everything—furniture, cars, houses,” Sangiorgi said post-show in the basement of Performance Ski, Keating’s shop on Hunter Street.

For Authier, which got into ski-wear two decades ago but has been making skis since 1910, the 50s was a golden era—not only of style but also of champion-skier brand ambassadors such as Hannes Schneider and Madeleine Berthod. The burgundy and bright orange jackets match the classic ski posters that Authier has appropriated as labels—retro advertisements for Cervinia, Asiago, Sestriere, and other high-altitude Italian resorts. They’re stitched onto squares of boiled wool, a fabric that was common in the old knickerbocker days but all but forgotten in an era of lightweight, breathable, waterproof ski-wear.

Keating said that as she and Sangiorgi were developing the collection, she went through the closets of friends around town. “It was either the super-techy stuff or it was old-lady. The elegant stuff was all dated—dark, boring,” she explained. Authier’s latest, she added, is “true to the origins of skiing, but with a new feel.”